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Daggerfall totally fails to excite me, don't get me wrong, I totally know why people like it but the idea of exploring a randomly generated world just seems totally flat. You're not really "exploring" just walking through randomly generated algorithms that fail to provide a sense of uniqueness or place. To be honest I've never much liked the dungeon crawling aspect of RPGs at all.

Sounds like, well, a bad game. What's the point of offering lots of player choice if, at the end of the day, the game is unplayable unless you stick to a narrow path of options.

Think about it. If your character is shit at killing things then they are better at other things. Play to your advantages. Run away from enemies, slam doors shut in their faces, find alternate rooms and avoid unnecessary rooms. You can't expect to kill everyone at the start of the game with a fragile character. Just get out of the starting dungeon. That should be your first goal.

Is there any way to increase the draw distance in Daggerfall? I'll probably never even play it, but exploring 60,000+ square miles would be a lot more enticing if I could see more than four feet in front of my face.

Is there any way to increase the draw distance in Daggerfall? I'll probably never even play it, but exploring 60,000+ square miles would be a lot more enticing if I could see more than four feet in front of my face.

People who go into the game expecting to be able to explore it all are doing it wrong. That's why many players who played it after Morrowind or Oblivion don't get it. It's an RPG and should be played as one. You should go to places you need to go to and explore places you need to explore.

While you technically can wander around outside in Daggerfall, there's no reason to do so. There's nothing interesting out there. A higher draw distance in the cities would be nice, but it's not terrible as-is.

Fast travel to cities and points of interest helpfully marked on your map - there's no shortage of places to explore and stuff to do.

EDIT: While looking for examples of draw distance, I found this video:

This was the video that I watched. I only asked because the video is as old as the game itself; thought a mod might've improved the draw distance.
Is the entire world as flat as these videos suggest? (dungeons aside) Because that would kill any interest I have in this game.

To be honest I've never much liked the dungeon crawling aspect of RPGs at all.

Me neither, which is why every time I try to play Daggerfall again I enjoy making a character, wander round a town for a while, then as soon as I have to go to a cave or dungeon I get bored of spending hours tediously clomping round a ridiculously huge labyrinth endlessly recalculating weight/value ratios and wondering how long it will be before I just accept that a bug has rendered the errand I'm on impossible.

People who go into the game expecting to be able to explore it all are doing it wrong. That's why many players who played it after Morrowind or Oblivion don't get it. It's an RPG and should be played as one. You should go to places you need to go to and explore places you need to explore.

How do you define "need" in this context? Do you mean following the narrative provided by the main quest or perhaps side quests? I've always believed that part of role-playing--even in your rigidly mechanical definition of the term--was to do things that make sense for your character to do. For example, a rogue who is good at backstabbing and lockpicking may still be adventurous, and it's not unreasonable for such a character to decide to go into a random dungeon and use his/her rogue skills to try to obtain fabulous and hidden treasures. There's no need for it, in that there is not a specific, outside force compelling the character to enter the dungeon, but it can work as both a character and mechanical approach to the game.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that it's not unreasonable for a player to desire some degree of freedom--including the freedom to fail, should an area, creature, or situation be impossible for their build. I know you're really big on defining RPG as a form of mechanics as opposed to experience--which I don't fully agree or disagree with, mind you--but it seems like you're advocating an essentially linear approach in which the role-playing begins and ends with how the character solves the problems he/she is presented using rigidly defined game mechanics, and dismissing the value in the character interacting with the world to open up new, dynamic opportunities to apply those rigidly defined game mechanics.

I would argue that if Daggerfall presents an open world, it's quality should be judged partly on how well it allows the player to explore that world, and not solely on how well it allows players to role-play through a specific path or paths within that world.

Not really. Dungeon crawling is the origin of RPGs. It's fine if you don't like it, but calling it grinding is an insult.

..and? It's accurate. Endlessly fighting the same things for marginal improvements in skills and equipment. It's fundamentally the same. Sure, dungeon crawling has an extra layer of work in the form of poring over stats after every fight to decide what loot to drop, but that doesn't change much.

Whether you consider it an insult is up to you - many people like grinding, and while I hate it, as long as they don't bother me with it, that's their business and I don't care.

..and? It's accurate. Endlessly fighting the same things for marginal improvements in skills and equipment. It's fundamentally the same. Sure, dungeon crawling has an extra layer of work in the form of poring over stats after every fight to decide what loot to drop, but that doesn't change much.

How do you define "need" in this context? Do you mean following the narrative provided by the main quest or perhaps side quests? I've always believed that part of role-playing--even in your rigidly mechanical definition of the term--was to do things that make sense for your character to do. For example, a rogue who is good at backstabbing and lockpicking may still be adventurous, and it's not unreasonable for such a character to decide to go into a random dungeon and use his/her rogue skills to try to obtain fabulous and hidden treasures. There's no need for it, in that there is not a specific, outside force compelling the character to enter the dungeon, but it can work as both a character and mechanical approach to the game.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that it's not unreasonable for a player to desire some degree of freedom--including the freedom to fail, should an area, creature, or situation be impossible for their build. I know you're really big on defining RPG as a form of mechanics as opposed to experience--which I don't fully agree or disagree with, mind you--but it seems like you're advocating an essentially linear approach in which the role-playing begins and ends with how the character solves the problems he/she is presented using rigidly defined game mechanics, and dismissing the value in the character interacting with the world to open up new, dynamic opportunities to apply those rigidly defined game mechanics.

I would argue that if Daggerfall presents an open world, it's quality should be judged partly on how well it allows the player to explore that world, and not solely on how well it allows players to role-play through a specific path or paths within that world.

Apologies if I'm unclear or if I misunderstood your point.

You did misunderstand my point. All I'm saying is that you can't go into it with the same mindset as you would go into the vast majority of other RPGs, especially modern ones, whereby your aim is to explore every inch of land and do every single quest possible. Daggerfall isn't like that. It's much more natural. It's useless to visit every single city, town, building and dungeon in the game. It's meaningless. You don't do that in real life after all. You go where you need to go to achieve your next goal, and the goal can be whatever you want it to be, regardless of if it's a quest or not. If you want to sleep at an inn then your goal is to head to the nearest inn. Stopping off to talk to every NPC (useless) and enter every building you can enter (useless) on your way there is not appropriate because of the procedural generation. You need to play it more realistically than the vast majority of other games out there.